


confident as the falcon's flight

by blackkat



Series: hawks 'verse [11]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Flirting, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25444342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: “Quinlan!” Adi calls as she approaches. “I think we picked up one of yours.”
Relationships: Quinlan Vos/Keeli (Star Wars)
Series: hawks 'verse [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825195
Comments: 18
Kudos: 501





	confident as the falcon's flight

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: I can’t help but imagine Quinlan mocking everyone for their taste in Fett men and then Keeli (who works for some sort of Red Cross/WHO/Peace Corps) comes to visit family and Quinlan gets gut-punched with attraction.

“Quinlan!” Adi calls as she approaches. “I think we picked up one of yours.”

Raising his head, Quinlan blinks at her over the pile of pottery shards he’s been cataloguing for too many hours now. “What?” he asks.

Adi arches a brow at him, thankfully closer to amused than anything, and comes to a stop at the edge of the pit. “One of yours. In our jail. He was picked up for being drunk and disorderly last night, but I wanted you to speak with him before I let him out.”

Quinlan pulls a face. “You want responsibility? From _me_?” he asks, but reaches up anyway. Adi reaches back, clasping his wrist and hauling him up to ground level.

“A truly astonishing thought,” Adi says, though from the humor in her face it’s just as much a joke to her. She tilts her head back towards the town, and Quinlan agreeably falls into step with her as she heads that way, eyeing her sidelong as he does.

“For this being a drunk student, you're pretty calm,” he says, testing, because Adi’s more than capable of being scary when she has to be. The graduate grunts are some of her favorite targets, too, when they act out.

Adi snorts softly, leading him back down several narrow streets towards the constable’s office. “He punched a man who hit his wife. And then four of the man’s friends. I can let him off with a warning, given how outnumbered he was, and I’ve also often wanted to punch the man he did. Today is a good day.”

Quinlan laughs, because Adi is perfectly composed and calm at all times, but he can totally imagine her wanting to punch people, even if she doesn’t actually follow through. “So who is it? Mak? Caleb? If it’s Caleb, Depa is going to hang me from the roof of the Humanities building for getting her kid thrown in prison.”

“He hasn’t said,” Adi says, amused. “Between his hangover and his bruises, he’s rather grumpy.”

Potentially Mak, then. Caleb with a hangover tends towards pathetic more than grumpy. Not that Quinlan knows. Depa might be on leave for her research, but if she catches wind that her high school aged son has been drinking while on a dig, she’ll blame Quinlan for it. Quinlan isn't prepared for that much horror in his daily life.

“I’ll drag him back to the hotel, pour him into bed,” Quinlan promises, because he’s not _that_ cruel. Tholme would—and did—haul him straight back to the dig and make him work outside in the hot sun until he wanted to die, as punishment for overindulging, but Quinlan prefers making students who do that deal with his permit paperwork instead. That’s twice the torture, and Quinlan can stretch it out indefinitely.

“Talk with him first,” Adi says sternly, and opens the door of the tiny constabulary building. The other two constables who make up the sum total of the town’s peacekeepers are both absent, but Stass is sitting at Adi’s desk, her medical bag at her feet. She looks up from her book long enough to wave, and Quinlan winks in return, making her laugh.

“Here for your wayward grad student, Vos?” she asks.

“Gives me a good excuse for seeing you and your beautiful cousin,” Quinlan says, and Stass rolls her eyes, waving him away. Quinlan laughs and goes, catching the ring of keys Adi tosses him and heading for the stairs down. They curve sharply, a narrow stairway built long before there was anything like a formal peacekeeper force here, and Quinlan eyes the division where the newer building starts, the foundation beneath that’s much, much older. They're working on excavating an old graveyard, but if he ever gets the chance—

For later, Quinlan tells himself, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Stass works with the local university, and she’ll help him figure things out so he can come back. Assuming drunk students don’t get them all kicked out of Tholoth on their asses.

The town’s drunk tank is small, a basic box of a cell with a wall of bars on two sides. There's a cot, a blanket, a pillow that’s clear because it’s pressed over the face of the cot’s current occupant to block out the light. Raising his brows, Quinlan comes to a stop, propping one shoulder against the wall. The hand he can see—that’s just about all he _can_ see—is dark-skinned, with a tattoo like curving horns across the back. It’s not something Quinlan recognizes, and he makes it a habit to pay attention to students’ identifying features.

“Hey,” he says. “So you're the drunk asshole impersonating one of my students?”

There's a long pause, but Quinlan waits it out. Finally, with a groan, the pillow is pulled away, and the guy on the cot sits up. He looks vaguely familiar, though Quinlan can't quite put his finger on where he’s seen him before, or even if he has, but—he’s hot, too. Carefully shaved hair with patterns along the sides, neatly trimmed beard, sharp eyes even if he’s squinting, and for a moment Quinlan can't even find words.

“I'm not impersonating anyone,” the guy says, and yeah, Adi was right—that’s definitely grumpy. “I just didn’t correct her misconception.”

Quinlan snorts. “Adi says thank you for punching that guy, but please don’t do it again until she’s off shift,” he says. “More or less. Come on, you look like you could use some coffee. And a jailbreak.”

“One more than the other,” the guy retorts, eyeing him warily. “Who the hell are you?”

Quinlan grins at him. “Professor Quinlan Vos, with the university in Coruscant. We have a dig a few blocks away, and you were making enough trouble that Adi assumed you were one of mine.”

“So that’s who she was talking about.” The guy sweeps a look over him, then raises a brow. “You don’t look like a professor. You look like a lost frat boy.”

“It’s good for student morale if they're more put-together than I am.” Quinlan unlocks the cell door, then swings it open grandly. “Come on, move your ass, I left a bunch of grad students unattended and I’d like to get back before they break the town.”

“You're bailing me out?” the guy asks warily, but he rises to his feet, grimacing a little.

“Adi’s got enough on her plate. She just wanted to put you somewhere to sleep it off, anyway.” Quinlan lets him pass, then asks, “Got a name?”

For a moment he thinks the guy isn't going to answer, but after a second, there's a heavy breath. “Keeli Fett. Thanks for the save.”

“Fett,” Quinlan repeats, and—hell. He’s been teasing Obi-Wan about his crush on that one Fett, which is so big it’s probably visible from space. And Aayla for _her_ Fett crush. And Depa for hers. If any of them find out he was just punched in the gut by one look at Keeli's face, they're never going to let it go. “Like Jaster's son? And half the student population at the university?”

“It’s not _half_ ,” Keeli says, though he sounds amused and resigned in equal measure. “But yeah. That Fett.”

“What are you doing in Tholoth, besides drinking heavily?” Quinlan asks, grinning, and leads the way up the stairs.

“Punching assholes,” Keeli mutters. “I was in the Peace Corp, but my two years ended and I took a detour on my way back home. There's supposed to be a volunteer group around this place somewhere, and I wanted to see if they needed any more bodies.”

Quinlan frowns, running through his memory of local NGOs. “I think they moved on, since their funding got cut. You got money for a plane ticket back?”

Keeli sighs, rubbing his face. He manages to miss the look Adi shoots Quinlan, but Quinlan just waves her off and tosses back the keys. “Probably. I wasn’t planning on going back just yet, though.”

If anyone can understand wanting to escape home for a bit, it’s Quinlan. That was why he started traveling with Tholme in the first place, after all. He snorts, guiding Keeli out into the quiet street, and offers, “How are you at manual labor?”

“I don’t faint in the sun, if that’s what you're worried about,” Keeli retorts, but he’s frowning faintly as he watches Quinlan close the door behind them. “Why?”

“The dig could use an extra grunt,” Quinlan says with a shrug. “And my hotel room has an extra bed, since they were out of singles. We’ll be in Tholoth for another month, if that’s long enough for you to figure out what you're doing next.”

Something like relief flickers across Keeli's face. “You're sure?”

“Yeah,” Quinlan says, and gives him a grin. “I could use some eye candy, anyway.”

Keeli rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile pulling at his mouth. “Archeology, huh?”

“With at least one fun jungle slog where I torture the students and see who cries first,” Quinlan says cheerfully. “Come on, you know you want to see that.”

Keeli laughs, and—yeah. Okay. Quinlan can maybe understand the attraction to a face like that a little too well. Damn it. “I won't say I’d object. All right, my manual labor is yours for the next month.”

“Great,” Quinlan says, and gets a hand on his back when he goes to make the wrong turn, shoving him in the direction of the dig. “Welcome to your new life as my personal assistant.”

“Yeah?” Keeli asks, and catches Quinlan's wrist. In a blur, he shoves back, and Quinlan finds himself pinned to a wall before he can think to duck, Keeli holding him there with a hand in his shirt. “If the manhandling is part of this, I think I have the right to manhandle you back.”

Quinlan grins, slow and lazy. “Throwing me around already? That’s usually second date stuff.”

“I’ll buy you a coffee,” Keeli retorts, but there's humor on his face, and something hotter as he looks Quinlan over. “And a sandwich. That’s two dates, right?”

Quinlan snorts. “Only if it’s a damn good sandwich.”

“It will be,” Keeli says, low, and lets go of him.

Quinlan can't wait.


End file.
